Second Italo-Ethiopian War
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, was a war of aggression waged by Italy against Ethiopia, which lasted from October 1935 to February 1937. In Ethiopia it is often referred to simply as the Italian Invasion, and in Italy as the Ethiopian War. It is seen as an example of the expansionist policy that characterized the Axis powers and the ineffectiveness of the League of Nations before the outbreak of World War II.
On 3 October 1935, two hundred thousand soldiers of the Italian Army commanded by Marshal Emilio De Bono attacked from Eritrea without prior declaration of war. At the same time a minor force under General Rodolfo Graziani attacked from Italian Somalia. On 6 October, Adwa was conquered, a symbolic place for the Italian army because of the defeat at the Battle of Adwa by the Ethiopian army during the First Italo-Ethiopian War. On 15 October, Italian troops seized Aksum, and an obelisk adorning the city was torn from its site and sent to Rome to be placed symbolically in front of the building of the Ministry of Colonies.
Exasperated by De Bono's slow and cautious progress, Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini replaced him with General Pietro Badoglio. Ethiopian forces attacked the newly arrived invading army and launched a counterattack in December 1935, but their poorly armed forces could not resist for long against the modern weapons of the Italians. Frustrated, Mussolini authorized the use of mustard gas, with the Regia Aeronautica dropping 330 tons over the next four months, violating the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Nazi Germany sent arms and munitions to Ethiopia because it was frustrated over Italian objections to its attempts to integrate Austria. This prolonged the war and sapped Italian resources. It would soon lead to Italy's greater economic dependence on Germany and less interventionist policy on Austria, clearing the path for Adolf Hitler's Anschluss.
The Ethiopian counteroffensive managed to stop the Italian advance for a few weeks, but the superiority of the Italians' weapons prevented the Ethiopians from taking advantage of their initial successes. The Italians resumed the offensive in late January. On 31 March 1936, the Italians won a decisive victory at the Battle of Maychew, which nullified any possible organized resistance of the Ethiopians. Emperor Haile Selassie was forced to escape into exile on 2 May, and Badoglio's forces arrived in the capital Addis Ababa on 5 May. Italy announced the annexation of the territory of Ethiopia on 7 May and Italian King Victor Emmanuel III was proclaimed emperor on 9 May. The provinces of Eritrea, Italian Somaliland and Abyssinia were united to form the Italian province of East Africa. Fighting between Italian and Ethiopian troops persisted until 19 February 1937. On the same day, an attempted assassination of Graziani led to the reprisal Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa, in which between 1,400 and 30,000 civilians were killed. Italian forces continued to suppress rebel activity by the Arbegnoch until 1939.
Italian troops used mustard gas in aerial bombardments against combatants and civilians in an attempt to discourage the Ethiopian people from supporting the resistance. Deliberate Italian attacks against ambulances and hospitals of the Red Cross were reported. By all estimates, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopian civilians died as a result of the Italian invasion, which have been described by some historians as constituting genocide. Crimes by Ethiopian troops included the use of dumdum bullets, the killing of civilian workmen and the mutilation of captured Eritrean Ascari and Italians, beginning in the first weeks of war.
Background
State of East Africa
The Kingdom of Italy began its attempts to establish colonies in the Horn of Africa in the 1880s. The first phase of the colonial expansion concluded with the disastrous First Italo-Ethiopian War and the defeat of the Italian forces in the Battle of Adwa, on 1 March 1896, inflicted by the Ethiopian Army of Negus Menelik II. In the following years, Italy abandoned its expansionist plans in the area and limited itself to administering the small possessions that it retained in the area: the colony of Italian Eritrea and the protectorate of Italian Somaliland. For the next few decades, Italian-Ethiopian economic and diplomatic relations remained relatively stable.On 14 December 1925, Italy's fascist government signed a secret pact with Britain aimed at reinforcing Italian dominance in the region. London recognised that the area was of Italian interest and agreed to the Italian request to build a railway connecting Somalia and Eritrea. Although the signatories had wished to maintain the secrecy of the agreement, the plan soon leaked and caused indignation by the French and Ethiopian governments. The latter denounced it as a betrayal of a country that had been for all intents and purposes a member of the League of Nations.
As fascist rule in Italy continued to radicalise, its colonial governors in the Horn of Africa began pushing outward the margins of their imperial foothold. The governor of Italian Eritrea, Jacopo Gasparini, focused on the exploitation of Teseney in an attempt to win over the leaders of the Tigre people against Ethiopia. The governor of Italian Somaliland, Cesare Maria de Vecchi, began a policy of repression that led to the occupation of the fertile Jubaland, and the cessation in 1928 of collaboration between the settlers and the traditional Somali chiefs.
Walwal Incident
The Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928 stated that the border between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia was 21 leagues parallel to the Benadir coast. In 1930, Italy built a fort at the Welwel oasis in the Ogaden and garrisoned it with Somali dubats. The fort at Welwel was well beyond the 21-league limit and inside Ethiopian territory. On 23 November 1934, an Anglo–Ethiopian boundary commission studying grazing grounds to find a definitive border between British Somaliland and Ethiopia arrived at Welwel.The party contained Ethiopian and British technicians and an escort of around 600 Ethiopian soldiers. Both sides knew that the Italians had installed a military post at Welwel and were not surprised to see an Italian flag at the wells. The Ethiopian government had notified the Italian authorities in Italian Somaliland that the commission was active in the Ogaden and requested the Italians to co-operate. When the British commissioner Lieutenant-Colonel Esmond Clifford, asked the Italians for permission to camp nearby, the Italian commander, Captain Roberto Cimmaruta, rebuffed the request.
Fitorari Shiferra, the commander of the Ethiopian escort, took no notice of the and Somali troops and made camp. To avoid being caught in an Italian–Ethiopian incident, Clifford withdrew the British contingent to Ado, about to the north-east, and Italian aircraft began to fly over Welwel. The Ethiopian commissioners retired with the British, but the escort remained. For ten days both sides exchanged menaces, sometimes no more than 2 m apart. Reinforcements increased the Ethiopian contingent to about 1,500 men and the Italians to about 500, and on 5 December 1934, shots were fired. The Italians were supported by an armoured car and bomber aircraft. The bombs missed, but machine gunfire from the car caused about 110 Ethiopian casualties. 30 to 50 Italians and Somalis were killed. The incident led to the Abyssinia Crisis at the League of Nations. On 4 September 1935, the League of Nations exonerated both parties for the incident.
Ethiopian isolation
Britain and France, preferring Italy as an ally against Germany, did not take strong steps to discourage an Italian military buildup on the borders of Italian Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. Because of the German Question, Mussolini needed to deter Hitler from annexing Austria while much of the Italian Army was being deployed to the Horn of Africa, which led him to draw closer to France to provide the necessary deterrent. King Victor Emmanuel III shared the traditional Italian respect for British sea power and insisted to Mussolini that Italy must not antagonise Britain before he assented to the war. In that regard, British diplomacy in the first half of 1935 greatly assisted Mussolini's efforts to win Victor Emmanuel's support for the invasion.On 7 January 1935, a Franco-Italian Agreement was made that gave Italy essentially a free hand in Africa in return for Italian co-operation in Europe. Pierre Laval told Mussolini that he wanted a Franco-Italian alliance against Nazi Germany and that Italy had a "free hand" in Ethiopia. In April, Italy was further emboldened by participation in the Stresa Front, an agreement to curb further German violations of the Treaty of Versailles. The first draft of the communique at Stresa Summit spoke of upholding stability all over the world, but British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, insisted for the final draft to declare that Britain, France and Italy were committed to upholding stability "in Europe", which Mussolini took for British acceptance of an invasion of Ethiopia.
In June, non-interference was further assured by a political rift, which had developed between the United Kingdom and France, because of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. As 300,000 Italian soldiers were transferred to Eritrea and Italian Somaliland over the spring and the summer of 1935, the world's media was abuzz with speculation that Italy would soon be invading Ethiopia. In June 1935, Anthony Eden arrived in Rome with the message that Britain opposed an invasion and had a compromise plan for Italy to be given a corridor in Ethiopia to link the two Italian colonies in the Horn of Africa, which Mussolini rejected outright. As the Italians had broken the British naval codes, Mussolini knew of the problems in the British Mediterranean Fleet, which led him to believe that the British opposition to the invasion, which had come as an unwelcome surprise to him, was not serious and that Britain would never go to war over Ethiopia.
The prospect that an Italian invasion of Ethiopia would cause a crisis in Anglo-Italian relations was seen as an opportunity in Berlin. Although Hitler did not want to see Haile Selassie win, Germany provided some weapons to Ethiopia out of fear of quick victory for Italy. The German perspective was that if Italy was bogged down in a long war in Ethiopia, that would probably lead to Britain pushing the League of Nations to impose sanctions on Italy, which the French would almost certainly not veto out of fear of destroying relations with Britain; that would cause a crisis in Anglo-Italian relations and allow Germany to offer its "good services" to Italy. In that way, Hitler hoped to win Mussolini as an ally and to destroy the Stresa Front.
A final possible foreign ally of Ethiopia was Japan, which had served as a model to some Ethiopian intellectuals. After the Welwel incident, several right-wing Japanese groups, including the Great Asianism Association and the Black Dragon Society, attempted to raise money for the Ethiopian cause. The Japanese ambassador to Italy, Dr. Sugimura Yotaro, on 16 July assured Mussolini that Japan held no political interests in Ethiopia and would stay neutral in the coming war. His comments stirred up a furor inside Japan, where there had been popular affinity for the fellow nonwhite empire in Africa, which was reciprocated with similar anger in Italy towards Japan combined with praise for Mussolini and his firm stance against the "gialli di Tokyo". Despite popular opinion, when the Ethiopians approached Japan for help on 2 August, they were refused, and even a modest request for the Japanese government for an official statement of its support for Ethiopia during the coming conflict was denied.